This confession, suitable in the lips of Paul, is equally appropriate in the mouth of each one of us who have known and proved the grace of God. We must consider Paul, according to his own account of himself, as being “not meet to be called an apostle,”-though “not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles,”-because he had persecuted the Church of God. In respect of personal merit, he knew that he did not deserve to be accounted of at all; yet, when the sole ground of approbation was not the service he had rendered to his Sovereign, but the favour which his Sovereign had bestowed upon him, he could say, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Take the meanest lamb in Jesu’s fold, the feeblest heir of grace, the most timid and fearing, the most hopeless and helpless of all disciples, the man most devoid of talent, the man who stands the very lowest on the list of the saints of God, surely he may and must say that “by the grace of God” he is what he is, so far as he is in Christ, a believer, with all the privileges that believers have a gracious right to claim. Let this be thy comfort, thou little one, that the same grace that made an apostle of Paul has made a Christian of thee. The selfsame power that hath quickened the mightiest man in the army of the Lord of hosts hath quickened thee also; the grace that saves the greatest saves the least. If the largest and brightest gem in the crown of Christ reflects his grace, and glorifies his love, even so shalt thou though thou be as the smallest pearl that shall be set in his glorious diadem of honour.

Then, next, take the apostle Paul in the other way, as he describes himself in our text. In the preceding verse, he says he is the least of the apostles, yet he also says, “I laboured more abundantly than they all.” It is equally true, whether you put him in the meanest place among converts, or in the very forefront of the army of faithful soldiers of Christ,-among the feeblest of pensioners or the most zealous of all the labourers in the vineyard of the Master,-the acknowledgment must be made, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Be our attainments never so eminent, our knowledge never so extensive, our usefulness never so great, yet still we stand, in the sight of God, on the same footing as the very meanest member of the Church of Christ. The song, which begins among the little and the timid, gathers strength among the great and the brave. It is not altered in the slightest degree; the language is the same, the strain the same, the song the same, “By the grace of God,” we all of us must say, “we are what we are.”

I am going to speak of my text, first, doctrinally; secondly, experimentally; and, thirdly, practically.

First, doctrinally. Each one of us, who is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, can take this sentence as his creed, and say, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

That is to say, first, I am not what I am as the result of something good which God foresaw would be in me. God has not vouchsafed his love, his favour, his mercy, to me because he foresaw that I should repent of my sin, and trust in his dear Son. No, there is a deeper cause for his love than anything that could be found in me. Indeed, there is nothing that could be found in me, that is lovely in his sight, but it would be proved, immediately, that he had, first of all, freely given that lovely thing to me, or himself created it within me. If I am a child of God, an heir of heaven, the well-spring of God’s love to me is in his own sovereign grace. Nothing in my disposition or character could move his heart to me. His heart must have moved spontaneously; it must have welled up, because of its own deep love; and it must have flowed towards me, in its own divine channel, simply because God in his sovereignty would have it so. “By the grace of God,” I am elected unto eternal life.

“Grace first inscribed my name,

In God’s eternal book.”

’Twas grace which set me apart, in distinguishing love, before the stars were made; ’twas grace that separated me from the mass of mankind; ’twas grace that laid hold of me while I was but as a pebble in the brook, and ordained that I should be a bright diamond in Christ’s crown. It was God who, in the beginning, by his own grace, decreed that I should be what I am; and, therefore, to begin there, we take this as our creed, “By the grace of God,”-as manifested in eternity, and by that alone,-have I been caused to be “what I am.”

Then, next, my text also means, I am not what I am as the result of any creature strength, or any means of my own. I am not what I am because I chose to be what I am; for if I had been what I chose to be, I should still have been “dead in trespasses and sins.” If I had followed my poor, blind free-will, it would have been, to this day, leading me to hell; but it would never have led me to heaven. If I had made it my guide, I should have wandered further, and further, and further away from God. With my back to the Saviour, I should never have moved towards God. It is the same with all of us; if there is anything good in any of us, we must confess that God himself put it there. He taught our souls to pray. He made us feel our need of grace. He stripped us of our boastful pride. He delivered us from our refuges of lies. He levelled the legality of our hearts by bringing us low with labour, exhausting all our strength. ’Twas he who cast the first ray of hope into our soul. He opened our blind eyes to see the beauty of Christ. He gave us the first glimmering of faith; he enabled us to see that our sins were washed away by the precious blood of Jesus; and he has kept us alive unto this day, and will not let us go.

We will maintain this truth against all comers, that saints are what they are “by the grace of God,” and not by their own free-will. I have sometimes heard men preach doctrines contrary to this. They have said that men are what they are as the result of the improvement of universal grace, and that the distinction which is apparent in them is made by themselves; God gave them a grace which they were to use,-not a grace which operated upon them, but a grace which they operated upon. According to that teaching, grace is given to men as a tool with which they are to work, not as a seal which God sets upon a man; grace is subservient to him, but he is not subservient to grace. Yet I must say that, although I have heard such doctrine as that preached from the pulpit, I have never known it to be practically received in the heart of a child of God. When you come to the point, and ask a true believer, “Why are you now a child of God, and an heir of heaven?” he tells you, once for all, “God made the difference.” He will, perhaps, tell you that men can do much towards their own conversion, but he will deny that he has done anything towards his own; he will loyally put the crown on the head of Christ, even though-being beclouded in his understanding,-he may have talked as if he denied the truth. But, brethren, what we hold is the doctrine of the effectual working of God in the hearts of his chosen ones, as the Lord said to Zerubbabel, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts;” and as Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.”

Now let us look at our text in another aspect. Some suppose that, even if divine grace begins the work, we must at least carry it on. It cannot be denied that the living child of God has power, but it must not be forgotten that the power of the living child of God is not in himself, but in his Heavenly Father. For it is as true of him as of any sinner “dead in trespasses and sins” that, without Christ, he can do nothing. The living child of God is still as powerless as the dead sinner apart from the constant indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the constant inflowing of the divine life into his soul. “By the grace of God” we not only are what we are, but we also remain what we are. We should long ago have ruined ourselves, and damned ourselves, if Christ had not kept us by his almighty grace. There has not been one hour in our whole Christian experience in which we have preserved ourselves; we cannot look back to any stage in our history, and say, “Here I wrought mighty marvels by my own unaided power.” We dare not say, when we have been made to stand on our high places, that we stood there by our own wisdom; nor can we say, when we have run without weariness, that we did it in our own strength. Nay, beloved, whenever we discover our own strength in our pilgrimage, it is in going backward, and in tumbling down, but never in going forward, or in mounting upward. With the psalmist, we have to say to the Lord, “All my springs are in thee;” and, as all the springs are in the Lord, so are all the streams as well. As for myself, I must continually sing,-

“Oh, to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be!”

Not only am I debtor to grace once for all, but each day adds to the debt, and each hour the bulk of my obligation grows. I must still say, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Some of you could say this twenty years ago, but you can say it with even greater emphasis now; and when you get grey-headed, and totter down to Jordan’s brink, you will not be able to say, “By my own goodness I am what I am.” Even there must you give all the glory to that grace which, having been the Alpha, will also be the Omega,-which, having been the beginning, will also be the end.

So, doctrinally, I state the truth of my text thus, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” I am elect;-my election is of grace. I am redeemed;-redemption is a mighty masterpiece of grace. I am called,-called by grace. I am preserved,-preserved by grace; and whatever there is in me that is commendable and virtuous,-whatever there is in me which the Son of God can admire, and which gives to my own soul real comfort,-must be all of grace, and of grace alone. I have spoken so much in the first person because the text is in the first person. Will every one of you also speak in the first person, and say in your heart, “By the grace of God I am what I am,” endorsing the text from your own experience, setting your seal to this part of God’s Word, and declaring it to be true, and going forth with this motto emblazoned on your banner as the doctrine which you will hear, and which, if you are called to the ministry, you will preach, “By the grace of God I am what I am”?

Now, in the second place, I am going to take the text experimentally.

By this I mean that there are times, in our experience, when this truth starts up in letters of light, and we recognize it as an indisputable fact, not only taught to us as a Scriptural doctrine, but proved to us by our own personal experience. Let me just narrate a few instances.

Brethren and sisters, have you ever had times when the fountains of the great deep of your depravity have been broken up? Have you ever been taken into the chambers of imagery, and has the Spirit of God there said to you, “Son of man, I will show you greater abominations than these;” and has he taken you first into one room, and then into another, and made you stand aghast while he has shown you the idols of your heart, the deep depravity that still remaineth in you, the pride, and sloth, and various forms of sin which still lurk and find shelter there? Have you ever had the filthy rags unrolled before your eyes? Have you heard the chattering of the unclean birds in the cage of your heart? Have you ever been fully conscious of the stench arising from your Old Adam nature? Has your spirit sickened at the very thought of the depravity of manhood in general, and of yourself in particular? Have you ever had your secret sins set in the light of God’s countenance? Have you ever been made to see the blackness of your own sin side by side with the brightness of divine favour? Have you ever been made to taste the exceeding bitterness of your sin even at the communion table,-even while you realized the preciousness of the blood of Christ, and renewed your former fellowship with him? If so, then I know that my text has been true to you, as it has been also to me, and that you have said, as I have often been compelled to say, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” You have looked at your heart, and you have seen its barren soil; and if there has been any wheat growing upon it, you have said, “This is the result of the grace of God.” You have looked at the huge black rock of your Old Adam nature, and when you have seen rivers of living water flowing out of the very midst of it, you have been obliged to say, “This mighty miracle could only have been wrought by the grace of God.” Flimsy views of human depravity lead to very indistinct ideas of the grace of God. There is nothing but deep sub-soil ploughing that ever makes a man sound in the doctrines of grace; and I will defy any man, who has had a deep experience of his own odious depravity, to believe any other doctrines but the doctrines of grace, which are commonly called Calvinism. Nay, more than that, the mind, unless it be most graciously taught by the Spirit of God, will be apt to go beyond the true Scriptural doctrine, and to push the term beyond its legitimate sphere.

There have been other occasions on which you and I have been forced to cry, “By the grace of God I am what I am;” namely, after some strong and terrible temptation. Have you never known what it is to feel some old lust, which you thought was dead, suddenly come upon you with a whirlwind power, and drive you before it, like a sere leaf of the forest, that could not resist its might? I have, sometimes, had this trying experience. When quietly meditating upon the things of God, some fierce and fearful impulse to sin has assailed me, as if a giant had seized me by the neck, and pushed me onward until, at last, I came to the very brink of some awful iniquity, and looked down upon it; and, just as it seemed as if I must plunge into it, my eyes have been opened, and I have seen the horror of great darkness, and I have exclaimed, “O God! how is it that I have not committed that sin? How is it that thou hast come to save me just in the nick of time, and stretched out thy hand to rescue me just when ‘my feet were almost gone,’-when ‘my steps had well-nigh slipped’?” Not only had I thought of slipping, but “my steps had well-nigh slipped. Then, thy mercy, O God, held me up!” I do not know whether you have had strong impulses of that kind; many of God’s people have, and especially those who, before conversion, plunged deeply into sin. You have sometimes had almost on your lips the oath which you have hated in your inmost heart; iniquity has come before you in a fascinating guise, and although you abhorred it, yet, for the moment, a strange hallucination of dazzling bewitchery seemed to lay hold of your spirit, and if you had yielded to it, you would have been like Samson when he fell into the hands of the Philistines. So it is that we are often compelled to say, as we look back upon marvellous providences and divine interpositions, “Truly, by the grace of God we are what we are, and by that grace alone have we been preserved from falling into sin.”

I think, too, that this truth has often been brought home to us when we have witnessed the fall of others. You have, perhaps, walked to and from the house of God with some notable professor of religion, and he has instructed you on many points. He seemed to be a man of deep experience and devout life. Your heart has been knit to him, and you have said, “Here is a brother indeed;” and you have, possibly, envied him his great attainments and his fluent speech. Then, on a sudden, you heard that he had fallen into some terrible sin; you made enquiries, and you found that it was only too true. You were present, one night, at the church-meeting, when the solemn sentence of excommunication was pronounced upon him; and while the minister uttered it, all the members wept, and prayed that the poor fallen one might be brought to repentance, and that his soul might not be the prey of Satan. At such a time as that, you have said, “By the grace of God I am what I am,” and you have said, with good John Newton,-

“When any turn from Zion’s way,

(Alas, what numbers do!)

Methinks I hear my Saviour say,

‘Wilt thou forsake me too?’

“Ah, Lord! with such a heart as mine,

Unless thou hold me fast,

I feel I must, I shall decline,

And prove like them at last.”

Such instances may act as beacons to warn us of pride, and to teach us again the lesson that by the grace of God we are what we are.

Then, brethren, I think there are other seasons when we learn this lesson; that is, in times of great dulness in spiritual matters. Heavenly trade is not always brisk, even in the best market, that is, in the breast of the believer. Spiritual mariners do not find that the wind always blows; and thus, though we should always have our sails up, (which, alas! is not always the case with us,) even then the wind would not always blow, for it “bloweth where it listeth.” Like the sea, we have our ebb as well as our flood-tide. Do you not know what it is to go to the throne of grace, when-as for words, you can find plenty of them; but as for heart, and soul, and vigour in prayer,-if your salvation depended upon your fervency, you must perish? Have you not gone to the mercy-seat, and groaned there-and groaned most of all because you could not groan as you ought? You have taken your wants to the throne of grace, but you have had to bring them away again. You have gone up to the house of God; and though you could find no fault with the sermon, there was, somehow or other, nothing in it for you. You went home to read your Bible; and though you knew that it was a precious book, it did not seem precious to you. It might be like a honeycomb, but you could not get any of the honey out of it. You had lost all spiritual appetite, and you felt as if you were drawing near to the gates of death. You remember, too, how you then sought the society of the godly, yet you received no consolation from them. Heavenly things seemed to be but dreams, the substantial things of eternity did not affect your spirit as they should have done; and you could only cry, with the psalmist, “My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word.” And at such times, and especially if your prayer has been graciously heard, you have been compelled to say, “It is my natural state to be cold and dull; and if, at any time, I run swiftly in the heavenly race,-if my sails are filled, and my bark is wafted towards paradise,-surely this is by the grace of God.”

Just one more remark upon this point. Times of great mercy often operate upon some of us so as to bring us very low, and to make us feel, “By the grace of God we are what we are.” Simon Peter had this experience. When his boat was full of fish, so that it began to sink, he fell on his knees before his Master, and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” The greatness of God’s mercy to him convinced him of his own undeservedness; and it has been the same with some of us. The more the glory of God’s grace has been revealed to our souls, the humbler have we been made to lie at his feet. When the Lord has piled up his mercies till they were like the great mountains, and his faithfulness has been like the bottomless depths, then have we been obliged to say, “These great things are indeed of God, they could not have come of man.” At such times, we have felt that we could sit before the Lord, as David did, and say, “Who am I, O Lord God? and what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?” God sometimes overwhelms his children with mercy quite as completely as he ever does with affliction. Pride may be overcome in two ways. It is sometimes overcome by trouble that crushes a man; but, at other times, the same result is produced by almighty grace, which, in overwhelming waves of love, rushes in upon the man’s spirit, till, submerged in love and mercy, he can only resign himself to its depths, and feel-yet ever feel that he cannot feel enough-the wonders of God’s grace, and his own littleness in comparison with God’s amazing favour. God sometimes humbles his children by putting them in the dark, but he sometimes does it in another way, as David said, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” How often have we also had to say, with David, “How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!” So I hope it will be with each one of us, that the greatness of God’s mercy to us, as a church, and as individuals, will lead us to say, “By the grace of God we are what we are.”

Now, in closing, let us consider our subject practically. What is the practical use of this text, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

Surely, as I have already reminded you, it is designed to keep us humble. Depend upon it, if we do not take this text for our motto every day, there is the rod of the covenant ready for us. He will soon be in a storm who does not see God’s grace in the sunshine. If his mercies surround us, and our days roll happily along, but we begin to ascribe our greatness and our riches to ourselves, it will not be long before God will bring us down. It may be so in your experience, especially if you soar upon the wings of self-confidence. As surely as you begin to get strong in your own strength, there is an hour of weakness close at hand. Whenever you are full of self, it will not be long before you learn your own emptiness; for he who begins to grow rich in himself is next door to poverty; nay, he is already clothed in rags. No, my brethren, there is no safe walking unless we make this the staff on which we lean, “By the grace of God we are what we are.” While we stick to this as our hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, everlasting motto, we shall not go astray, nor shall we experience those terrible down-castings which are the inevitable result of our up-flyings in self-confidence. Come then, beloved, from this day let us learn humility, let us tread our pride in the dust, and say, “Why should we be proud? By the grace of God we are what we are.”

Then, in the light of our text, let us learn charity. Why should I be harsh towards those who are not what I am? I wish that some persons, who think themselves very sound in doctrine, would recollect our text. If another brother is thought to be unsound, they are ready to cut him in pieces; it would be better if they were to say, before using their sword for such a purpose, “By the grace of God we are what we are.” Though you should be never so sound and right yourselves, be gentle with the brother who has not received so much grace as you have. Good John Newton used to say that, for a Calvinist to be proud, was the most inconsistent thing in the world; because, by his own profession, there were truths which no man could receive or understand of himself; so, why should he boast of his own attainments, and why should he blame others for not doing what he knows they cannot do of themselves? If our brethren cannot see as well as we can, why should we be angry with them because our eyes are better than theirs? I see no reason for being angry with a blind man because he cannot see; that is the very reason why we should pity his infirmity. So, let us seek to relieve those who are burdened, to bring back those who have wandered, to strengthen the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees, and, to the best of our power, to lead others into that glorious light in which we ourselves are walking, for by the grace of God we are what we are.

Moreover, this should teach us hopefulness concerning other men. There is a drunken man; you think he can never be converted, but why not? The grace that saved you is sufficient to save him. You sometimes meet with an infidel; perhaps you have one in your family,-a father, or brother, or sister,-and you are apt to say, “Well, it is no use trying to get such an one to go to the house of God; all he would do would be to mock and jeer. If the minister should make a mistake, he would seize upon it, and use it as his stock-in-trade for the abuse of a week. If there be a fault among God’s children, he is sure to notice it, and to make it the theme of his reproach, so he had better be kept away from them.” But again I say, the grace that saved you is sufficient to save him; never give anyone up, even as God did not give you up. I always think that, as God has converted me by his grace, he can convert anybody; the conversion of any other sinner is not any more difficult to omnipotence, neither is it any easier, for omnipotence knows nothing of degrees. What marvellous things Christ has done, and done in some of us, too! Some of you must weep over that verse in which the apostle says. “And such were some of you, but ye are washed;” and you say, “Yes, and to God be all the glory that he hath made us what we are.” Therefore, let us continue to look after those whom Satan has ensnared, even the most hard-hearted sinners, and seek to bring them under the saving influence of the grace of God.

Then, lastly, if we are what we are “by the grace of God,” this should teach us greater thankfulness. Children of the Heavenly King, never forget to praise your God. We sometimes fail in this duty. We have had many meetings for prayer, to ask God to bless us in our manifold labours; now let us have some meetings for praise, to bless the Lord for his great goodness to us. I have heard that, in some parts of New England, there used to be a day of fasting every month, to mourn for the iniquity of the land, and so on; and, at last, some senator proposed that they should have a feast, and thank God for the mercies which they had received; and, truly, he was in the right. It is not good always to be fasting, we must feast sometimes. An old Puritan says that we take in breath by prayer,-by a sort of heavenly inspiration,-and that we breathe it out again by praise. Dear brethren and sisters, if you and I were to sing as heartily as we ought to sing, what a joyous song of praise there would be! If our voices could but be tuned to the deservings of God, what songs and sonnets would make glad this wilderness! You remember Ralph Erskine’s sonnet on the battle in heaven,-the great contention of the bards in paradise. He pictures them all contending as to who should have the lowest place, and which should most loudly praise the Lord. There were the babes snatched from their mothers’ breasts; they claimed the lowest place because they had gone straight to heaven without any trials or troubles. But the grey-headed men, who had been divinely supported under the afflictions of many years, said that they owed the most to sovereign grace. Then came those who had been converted in their early years, and who said that they had already had a heaven below, so they could sing the loudest of all. Then came the penitent thief, who said that he had the greatest cause to praise the Lord for he had been converted at the last. While some declared that they must praise God most because they had been the blackest sinners, others said that they would praise him most for the restraining grace which had kept them from sin; and so the strife went on until they agreed, each one, to sing with all his might to the praise of that everlasting love which inscribed their names in the Lamb’s book of life, that great love which bought them with Jesu’s precious blood, and that omnipotent love which attended them all their journey through, and landed them at last in heaven.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

NUMBERS 4:1-33

Verses 1, 2. And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, Take the sum of the sons of Kohath from among the sons of Levi, after their families, by the house of their fathers,-

There were three families,-those of Kohath, Gershon, and Merari, and to each of these families a different service was allotted. First, they were to be numbered. “The Lord knoweth them that are his,” and he takes count of all his people.

3. From thirty years old and upward even unto fifty years old, all that enter into the host, to do the work in the tabernacle of the congregation.

They were to take up this work as a warfare; for, though it was a peaceful work, yet it is described as being a warfare; and he who serves the Lord, though that service be perfect peace, will not serve him without finding it to be also a warfare.

4. This shall be the service of the sons of Kohath in the tabernacle of the congregation, about the most holy things:

They were to have to do with the most holy place,-to carry it, and to carry the vessels of it,-a very honourable position.

5, 6. And when the camp setteth forward, Aaron shall come, and his sons, and they shall take down the covering vail, and cover the ark of testimony with it: and shall put thereon the covering of badgers’ skins, and shall spread over it a cloth wholly of blue, and shall put in the staves thereof.

These Kohathites might not so take the ark as to handle it, much less might they ever look at it. But the priests, and the sons of Aaron, went in first, and after carefully covering the holy place, they covered up the sacred ark with a cloth of blue. Blue was the token of holiness,-of separation. Hence, every Israelite wore a border of blue upon his garment; but this, which was the symbol of the divine presence, was “all of blue.” It is all holiness. We wear, alas! but a border of blue, but this holy thing was “all of blue.”

7. And upon the table of shewbread they shall spread a cloth of blue, and put thereon the dishes, and the spoons, and the bowls, and covers to cover withal: and the continual bread shall be thereon:

When they moved the sacred table, the bread was always there; twelve loaves for the twelve tribes, for the bread of God’s house is never lacking.

8-10. And they shall spread upon them a cloth of scarlet, and cover the same with a covering of badgers’ skins, and shall put in the staves thereof. And they shall take a cloth of blue, and cover the candlestick of the light, and his lamps, and his tongs, and his snuffdishes, and all the oil vessels thereof, wherewith they minister unto it: and they shall put it and all the vessels thereof within a covering of badgers’ skins, and shall put it upon a bar.

There were means for handling these vessels without touching them. I mean, the ark had staves, and the vessels were put upon a bar for carrying them.

11. And upon the golden altar they shall spread a cloth of blue, and cover it with a covering of badgers’ skins, and shall put to the staves thereof:

A type of the holiness veiled in our Lord’s humanity; the badger skin made apparent the simplicity, the poverty, the humility of our Lord, covering evermore that wondrous cloth of blue.

12, 13. And they shall take all the instruments of ministry, wherewith they minister in the sanctuary, and put them in a cloth of blue, and cover them with a covering of badgers’ skins, and shall put them on a bar: and they shall take away the ashes from the altar, and spread a purple cloth thereon:

A royal altar is this, always grand and glorious in our eyes, covered with a purple cloth.

14-20. And they shall put upon it all the vessels thereof, wherewith they minister about it, even the censers, the fleshhooks, and the shovels, and the basons, all the vessels of the altar; and they shall spread upon it a covering of badgers’ skins, and put to the staves of it. And when Aaron and his sons have made an end of covering the sanctuary, and all the vessels of the sanctuary, as the camp is to set forward; after that, the sons of Kohath shall come to bear it: but they shall not touch any holy thing, lest they die. These things are the burden of the sons of Kohath in the tabernacle of the congregation. And to the office of Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest pertaineth the oil for the light, and the sweet incense, and the daily meat offering, and the anointing oil, and the oversight of all the tabernacle, and of all that therein is, in the sanctuary, and in the vessels thereof. And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, Cut ye not off the tribe of the families of the Kohathites from among the Levites: but thus do unto them, that they may live, and not die, when they approach unto the most holy things: Aaron and his sons shall go in, and appoint them every one to his service and to his burden: but they shall not go in to see when the holy things are covered, lest they die.

This is a very awful thing; I mean, something which should produce a great awe and solemnity in our hearts. These men were chosen to carry the vessels of the most holy place, yet they must never see them. They must be covered up by the hands of the priest, and they must never touch them. They must bear them by their staves, or upon the bar upon which they were placed. Oh, how terrible a thing it is to draw near to God! The Lord our God is a jealous God. He will be served with holy reverence, or not at all. Hence he says to Moses and Aaron, “Take care that you do not lead these men into any mistake. You go in first, and point out to each man what he is to carry. See that all is covered up; for, if you do not, they may die in their work. Do not be accessories to their act, and bring upon them this terrible judgment.” I often wish that God’s people would be careful not to cause sin in any of his servants when they are engaged in the divine ministry. Perhaps in preaching, or otherwise, there may be something done which vexes the Holy Spirit, and causes trouble and sin. And, oh! he who stands in the holy place, and bears the holiest of the vessels, needs to fear and tremble before God; and he needs to ask his brethren to see that they do nothing which might inadvertently cause him to sin.

21-24. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take also the sum of the sons of Gershon, throughout the houses of their fathers, by their families; from thirty years old and upward until fifty years old shalt thou number them; all that enter in to perform the service, to do the work in the tabernacle of the congregation. This is the service of the families of the Gershonites, to serve, and for burdens:

They were to bear the external coverings of the holy place. The most holy place was in the custody of the Kohathites; but the Gershonites were to carry as follows,-

25-28. And they shall bear the curtains of the tabernacle, and the tabernacle of the congregation, his covering, and the covering of the badgers’ skins that is above upon it, and the hanging for the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and the hangings of the court, and the hanging for the door of the gate of the court, which is by the tabernacle and by the altar round about, and their cords, and all the instruments of their service, and all that is made for them: so shall they serve. At the appointment of Aaron and his sons shall be all the service of the sons of the Gershonites, in all their burdens, and in all their service: and ye shall appoint unto them in charge all their burdens. This is the service of the families of the sons of Gershon in the tabernacle of the congregation: and their charge shall be under the hand of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest.

There was a wise division of labour. I wish we had the same kind of thing in every church, and that every member occupied himself in that to which God has appointed him. But there are some who want to do what they cannot do, and who do not care to do what they can do.

29-32. As for the sons of Merari, thou shalt number them after their families, by the house of their fathers; from thirty years old and upward even unto fifty years old shalt thou number them, every one that entereth into the service, to do the work of the tabernacle of the congregation. And this is the charge of their burden, according to all their service in the tabernacle of the congregation; the boards of the tabernacle, and the bars thereof, and the pillars thereof, and sockets thereof, and the pillars of the court round about, and their sockets, and their pins, and their cords, with all their instruments, and with all their service: and by name ye shall reckon the instruments of the charge of their burden.

They had the heaviest load to carry, but they were the more numerous. They carried the solid columns upon which the covering of the tabernacle rested. And notice that they had also to carry the pins. Sometimes, God’s servants dislike carrying pins. They feel themselves too big; but blessed is that servant who, in his place, can be content to carry “their sockets, and their pins, and their cords, with all their instruments.”

33. This is the service of the families of the sons of Merari, according to all their service, in the tabernacle of the congregation, under the hand of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest.

CONCEIT REBUKED

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, June 7th, 1903,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Thursday Evening, July 5th, 1877.

“Should it be according to thy mind?”-Job 34:33.

Elihu thought that Job had spoken too boastfully, and that there was too much of self about him, and, therefore, he reproved him by asking this question, “Should it be according to thy mind?” It is a question which, in the original, has a great wealth of meaning in it; and as the language of the Book of Job is extremely ancient, and very sententious, it is not easy to get the fulness of Elihu’s meaning. But it has been said that, upon the whole, our translation not only gives the meaning of his enquiry, but also more of the meaning than can be conveyed in any other words, so that we may be perfectly satisfied with it, and may pray God the Holy Spirit to apply it to us; and if we have grown to be high and mighty, and have begun to criticize the way of God in dealing with us, this question may come to us very sharply, “ ‘Should it be according to thy mind?’ Should everything be arranged just to suit thy whims and wishes? Should everything in the world be fashioned according to thy taste, and the whole globe revolve just to serve thy turn, and please thy fancy? ‘Should it be according to thy mind?’ ”

There are four things I am going to say concerning our text; and first, I shall ask, Are there really any people in the world who think that everything should be according to their mind? Then, secondly, I shall enquire, what leads them to that notion? Thirdly, I shall try to show you what a mercy it is that they cannot have everything according to their mind; and then, fourthly, I shall urge you to keep this evil spirit in check, so that, henceforth, you will not wish that things should be according to your mind.

Our first question has a measure of astonishment about it. Are there really any people in the world who would have everything according to their mind? Oh, yes, there are such people! I should not wonder if there are some of them here now; in fact, I question whether we have not, all of us, at times, drunk very deeply into this naughty, haughty spirit. If we have done so, may we be speedily delivered from it!

First, there are some people who would have God himself according to their mind. Now, as a matter of fact, all that I can know of God I must learn from God revealing himself to me. I cannot discover him by myself; he must unveil himself to me, and that he has done in Holy Scripture. All that he intends us to know about himself he has revealed in the written Word and in the Incarnate Word, his ever-blessed Son. But there are some people who get their idea of God out of themselves. You may have heard of the German philosopher who evolved the idea of a camel out of his own consciousness; at least, so he said. I do not think it was much like a camel when he had evolved it; but there are many persons who try to evolve the idea of God out of their own consciousness. It cannot be, they say, that certain statements in the Bible are true, because there is something or other, in their inner consciousness, that contradicts the Scriptural declarations. God, as they believe in him, is what they think he ought to be, not what he really is. And there are some, in these days, who have even gone so far as to reject the Old Testament altogether because its teaching concerning God does not meet the approval of their very marvellous minds. Practically, these people are idolaters, for an idolater is one who makes a god unto himself. The true worshipper of God-the accepted worshipper-is one who worships God as he is, and as he reveals himself in his Word; but there are many persons, who make a god out of their own thoughts. The teachers of the modern school of theology work in a kind of god-factory. The people in some heathen lands make their gods out of mud, but these men make their gods out of their own thought, their imagination, their “intellect.” That is what they call it, though I am not sure that it is that organ which is at work in this instance. But when a man makes a god of thought, he is just as much an idolater as if he had made a god of wood or of gold. The true God-the God of Scripture-thus revealed himself to his ancient people, “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” This God is our God, “the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” “the God of the whole earth shall he be called.” Many a man refuses to accept this God as his; but I should like to ask him, “Should God be according to thy mind?” That would be a strange god indeed. Should he have no other attributes but such as thou wouldst give to him? Should his character and conduct be only such as thou canst comprehend and justify? Must there be nothing in him that shall puzzle thee? Are there to be no divine deeps that shall be beyond the reach of thy finite mind? Are there to be no heights beyond thy power to soar? That is what seems to be thy notion; and if there is anything that staggers thee a little, thou sayest, “I cannot believe it.” If it were possible, thou wouldst eliminate from the character of God everything that is stern and terrible; though these attributes clearly appertain to the Most High as he has been pleased to reveal himself in Scripture. I beg you, dear friends, never to attempt to mould the character of God with the fingers of your own fancy. Worship him just as he is, though thou canst not comprehend him. Believe in him as he reveals himself, and never imagine that thou couldst, by making any change in him, effect an improvement in him. By toning down his justice, thou thinkest that thou art increasing his love; and, by denying his righteous vengeance, thou dost imagine that thou art honouring his goodness; but, instead of doing so, by the removal of these things which alarm and annoy thee,-if thou couldst do so,-thou wouldst take away part of God’s grandeur and strength which make his goodness and his mercy to shine so brightly as they now do. Leave God just as he is, remembering how he has said, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” The infinite God must be past finding out by the creatures whom he hath made. I confess that it is one of my greatest joys to find myself completely baffled when I am trying to comprehend the character of God. Sometimes, when I have tried to preach upon the Deity of Christ, I have been fairly staggered under the burden of that stupendous truth, and I have felt the utter uselessness and poverty of human language to describe our great and terrible yet loving Lord; and I have been glad to have it so; for, verily, God is altogether above our comprehension, and none of us can speak of him as he deserves to be spoken of; but never let us try in any way to diminish his glorious perfections.

A more common way of offending against God, and setting up our self-will, is by quarrelling with his providential dealings. If anyone here is doing so, let me ask, “Should it be according to thy mind?” You look, sometimes, upon the arrangements of providence on a great scale in reference to the nations of the earth,-you see them at war with one another, and you note how slow is the progress of civil and religious liberty, and how few there are to rally in defence of right principles. Sometimes, you get greatly distressed about the general state of affairs, and you wish you could alter it; but the Lord looks down from his eternal throne, and he seems to say to you, “Should it be according to thy mind?” The world was wisely ordered by God before we were born, and it will be equally well ordered by him after we are dead. When Alexander Peden, the Covenanter, was dying, he sent for one of his brethren, a fellow-minister of the Word,-James Renwick; and he bade him stand out in the room, and turn his back to his departing friend. When he had done so, Peden said to him, “I have looked at thee, and I perceive that thou art only a little man, and thou hast but feeble shoulders and weak legs.” “Yes,” replied Renwick, “that is true, but wherefore hast thou made that observation?” “Because,” said Peden, “I perceive that thou canst not, after all, carry the whole world upon thy back; thou art not made for any such work as that;” and I may say of all of us who are here that we were not made to carry the world on our backs. Yet some of us attempt to play the part of Atlas, and not only try to carry the world, but seek to set the church right as well. We fancy that we can do that, poor worms that we are, but the Lord knows that we can do nothing of the kind. “He remembereth that we are dust,” though we are apt to forget it ourselves. Well, beloved, after all, “should it be according to thy mind?” Wilt thou, like Jonah, sit pining, and mourning, and complaining? Does not the eternal Ruler understand the politics of nations, and the best way of governing the world, infinitely better than thou dost? Do not thou attempt to drive the horses of the sun; thy puny hands are unfit for so tremendous a task as that. Leave all things with God; they are ordered well so long as they are ordered by him.

Probably, however, it is with the minor providences that we more often quarrel when we are in an ill state of heart. You think that you would like to be rich, yet you are poor. “Should it be according to thy mind?” You would have liked to be healthy and strong, but you are weak and sickly, or you have a suffering limb that troubles you, and you sometimes think, “Mine is a very hard lot; I wish it could be altered.” “Should it be according to thy mind?” Should the fashioning of thyself and thy circumstances have been left to thee? What thinkest thou? Possibly, you have recently sustained a great loss in business, and you cannot quite get over it. “Should it be according to thy mind?” Should providential circumstances have been arranged otherwise so as to suit thee? Should God have stopped the great machinery of the universe, and put it out of gear in order to prevent thee from losing a few pounds? “Should it be according to thy mind?”

Perhaps it is worse than that; a dear child has been taken away just when he had become most closely entwined around thy heart. Thou wouldst fain have kept him with thee; but was it right that he should go, or right that he should stay? Come now, there is a difference of opinion between thee and God, who is in the right? Should it be according to his mind, or according to thy mind? “Ah!” says someone else, “it is the mainstay of the home who has been taken away from us,-the husband, the father of the family.” Well, though it is so, again I ask, concerning this bereavement, or any other trial that comes to you, “Should it be according to thy mind?” It should be sufficient for you to know that the Lord has permitted it, or actually performed it.

Should it be according to thy mind, or according to his mind? It is not easy, I know, to submit without murmuring to all that happens to us. I am probably touching very tender places in many who, at divers times and seasons, have really felt that God, in his providential dealings with them, had been unkind to them, or that, at least, he had been showing his kindness in a very strange way.

There are some, who carry this difference between them and God into another sphere; for they do not approve of the gospel as it is taught in the Bible. You know that the gospel, as revealed in the New Testament, is so simple that a child can understand it; and you may go and teach it to the poorest and the most illiterate, and many of them will leap at it, and grasp it at once. But there are others who think that it should be something which is much more difficult to understand, something which would need a higher order of intellect than the common people possess. Do you really think so, my dear sir? Should it be according to thy mind?” Wouldst thou shut out the poor, and the needy, and the illiterate, from the privileges of the gospel, and keep them to thyself, and to a few others who have been highly educated? Surely not. O brethren, if it were possible for us to preach a gospel that we had made obscure, or which could only be comprehended by the élite of society, we should soon have cause sadly to deplore before God that we had lost that simple, blessed, plain way of instruction which the wayfaring man, though a fool, can understand, and in which he need not err.

Many try to trim down the doctrines of grace. They would get rid of election if they could. Anything like the speciality of the atonement of Christ they cannot bear. The sweet and blessed doctrine of effectual calling they abhor, and they would fain make a gospel of their own. But should they want to do so? Is it not your duty and mine, brother, rather to try to find out what the gospel really is than to seek to make it what we consider it ought to be? “Should it be according to thy mind?” We have known some people take a text of Scripture, and because it did not square with the system in which they were brought up, they tried to cut it down to make it fit in with their notions; but, sirs, is not the gospel grander than any of our comprehensions of it? Are there not in it great truths that cannot be cut down to fit any system that the human mind can make? And ought we not to be thoroughly glad that it is so? For, surely, it is better that the gospel should be according to God’s mind than that it should be according to the mind of Toplady, or the mind of Wesley, or the mind of Calvin, or the mind of Arminius? The mind of God is greater than all the minds of men, so let all men leave the gospel just as God has delivered it unto us.

Sometimes, this difference comes up concerning the Church of Christ. Some people do not like God’s order of church-membership and church-government; they would like to see the world welcomed inside the church. They do not approve of the ordinances as they were instituted and observed by our Lord Jesus Christ; believers’ baptism is peculiarly objectionable to them. Sometimes, they disapprove of God’s ministers; they pick holes in the most useful of them; this man ought to be so-and-so, and that other man ought to be something else. I can only ask again, with regard to the whole matter, “Should it be according to thy mind?” Are you to make the ministers, and to teach them what they are to preach? Are they your servants or God’s servants, and are they to deliver their message in your way or in God’s way? Let the question be honestly considered, and then, perhaps, much of the murmuring that is sometimes heard, and much of the discord that often arises among professing Christians, would be cleared away. For, surely, these things should not be according to our mind; but we should let God appoint, and equip, and send forth his own servants just as he pleases, and not as we please. Christ must decide everything concerning his own Church; he must be free to choose whom he likes to be members of it, and to fashion his Church after his own model.

Now, secondly, we are to enquire-What leads people to think that everything should be according to their mind?

My answer is, first, that there is a great deal of self-importance in such a notion. There are some people who seem to fancy that they are the centre of the whole universe. The times are always bad if they do not prosper. If the earth does not so revolve as to bring grist to their mill, then the times must be out of joint. But who are you, dear friend, that you should suppose that for you suns rise and set, that for you seasons change, and that God is to have respect to you, and to nobody else? “Should it be according to thy mind?” Then, if so, why not according to my mind also? And why not according to the mind of another brother? And why not according to the mind of yet another? But no, it is according to thy mind that thou wouldst have it. Ah, does not this show what overweening importance we attach to ourselves? We are mere ephemera, creeping insects upon the bay-leaf of existence,-here to-day, and gone to-morrow,-yet we suppose that all things are to be ordered for our special benefit, and we quarrel with God if we suffer even a little inconvenience.

This notion also arises from self-conceit. We really seem to fancy that we could arrange things much better than they now are; we would not dare plainly to say so, much less would we be willing to write it; but we talk and feel as if it were really so. If we only had had the ordering of things, we are quite sure that they would not have happened as they have done; but then, depend upon it, they would have happened wrongly if they had been other than they have been. “Should it be according to thy mind?” No; unless thou art self-conceited enough to put thy folly in comparison with the wisdom of God, thou knowest that it should not be according to thy mind.

Then there is the spirit of murmuring that so easily comes upon us; we have known some who really became slaves to that evil spirit. They complained of everything, nothing was right in their eyes; it was not possible, it seemed, even for God himself to please them. “Should it be according to thy mind?” How would it be possible to please one who is so changeable, so whimsical, so fanciful, as thou art? Poor simpleton; surely thou canst not think that such a thing should be.

But, oftentimes, this quarrel arises from want of faith in God. If we did but believe in him, we should see that all things are ordered well. If we did but trust in God as a loving child trusts in its father, we should feel safe enough at all times, and we should not want to have anything different from what it is Have you never heard of the woman, who was in a great storm at sea, and terribly frightened? She saw her husband, who was the captain of the ship, perfectly composed even while the vessel was tossed about by the mighty billows, but he could not calm her troubled heart. So he drew a sword from its scabbard, and held it close to her breast. As he did so, he said to her, “Do you not tremble, my wife?” “No,” she replied, “I am not in the least afraid.” “But this sword is close to you.” “I am not afraid of that,” said she, “because it is in my husband’s hand.” “Well,” said he, “is it not even so with this storm? Is it not in the hand of God; and if it be in his hand, why should we be alarmed?” So, if we have true faith in God, we shall accept whatever God sends us, and we shall not want to have things arranged according to our mind, but we shall quite agree with what his mind ordains.

So would it be, too, if you had more love to God, for love always agrees with that which its object delights in. So, dear friends, when we come to love God with a perfect heart, we are glad for God to have his way with us. If he wills that we should be sick, we would not wish to be otherwise. If he wills that we should be poor, we are willing to be poor; and if he wills that we should pass through a sea of trial, we would not wish to have a drop less than his blessed will appoints.

But now, thirdly, what a mercy it is that things are not according to our mind! If they were, I wonder what sort of world we should live in.

If things were according to our mind, God’s glory would be obscured. He knows what will best glorify him, and he has been pleased to so arrange his providential dealings with men that all shall glorify him to the highest possible degree. And, beloved, if we were to alter anything of this, if we could alter anything, it is evident that the glory of God would not be so well promoted; so, “should it be according to thy mind” that God should lose a measure of the glory that is due unto his name? God forbid!

If it were according to our mind, others would often have to suffer. At any rate, if things were arranged according to the mind of some people, they would grind the poor in the dust, and utterly crush them. If things were settled according to the mind of man, we should often be in a terrible plight. Did not David say to God, “Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man”? When God is most grieved with his people, he never deals with them in so harsh a manner as the ungodly would deal with them if they had them in their power. Let us trust in the Lord, my brethren, and thank him that he does not allow things to be according to the mind of man, for it would be terrible indeed for us then.

Here is another reflection. If things were according to our mind, we should have an awful responsibility resting upon us, because we should feel that, if anything went amiss, we should be the cause of it. If we had the choosing of our circumstances, and the details of all that happened to us, we should straightway feel that we should be called to account for everything by our fellow-men and by our own conscience. But now that it is according to the mind of God, you have no responsibility concerning it. If it be according to his will, it must be that which is right, and that which is best; so let us bless his name that all things are left at his disposal.

If things were according to our mind, I am afraid our temptations would soon be greatly increased; for many who are poor would speedily become rich, and they do not know what the temptation of riches might be, nor the grace they would need to resist it. And some, who are sick now, and are praising God upon their sick-beds, if they were well, might find much of their spirituality departing, and they might be thrown into a thousand troubles which they now escape in the quiet of their own room. Some of you are in a condition of life where you may not have many comforts; but, on the other hand, you are not subject to those trials which come to us who are prominent in public life. Be sure that you are in your right place if God put you there. “Should it be according to thy mind?” If so, thou wouldst have more temptations, and leas grace;-more of the world, but less of thy Lord. So, thank him that it is not according to thy mind.

If it were according to our mind, we should seldom know our own mind. If a man could manage everything as he liked, he would not long like his own management. Unrenewed men, especially, are never satisfied. The way for a man to be happy is not to have his own will, but to sink his will in the will of God. Look at Solomon when he had his own way. At one time, he gave all his thoughts to grand buildings; and when he had built his palaces, he got quite tired, so he took to making gardens, and aqueducts, and fountains of water. When he had made them, he did not get much satisfaction out of them, so he gat him instruments of music, and singing men and singing women, but he was soon tired of them. Then he took to study, but he said, “Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” He had whatever he chose to have, yet it was all vanity and vexation of spirit to him; and he never had what filled his soul till he came to rest alone in his God, which, we trust, he did in his old age. I do not know a more horrible endowment that a man could have than for God to say to him, “Everything shall be as you like to have it.” He would probably be the most miserable and most dissatisfied person under heaven. “Should it be according to thy mind?” Ah, then, sin would go uncorrected in thee, for thou wouldst never have a mind to use the rod! Then thy dross would remain, for thou wouldst never have a mind to be put into the furnace. Should all things go with thee according to thine own will, then thy flesh would get the mastery over thee, and be pampered and indulged; thou wouldst be settled on thy lees, and not emptied from vessel to vessel, and thou wouldst bring upon thyself unutterable woe. O beloved, for this reason also it is a thousand mercies that things are not arranged according to the mind of even the best saint out of heaven except when his mind is brought into full subjection to the will of God.

“Should it be according to thy mind?” Then, there would be universal strife. If this were the case, think what a terrible condition the Church of God, and the world, too, would soon be brought into, because, as I have already hinted, if it were according to your mind, why should it not be according to my mind, or according to the mind of every other body? Then, what chaos, what confusion there would be! How would the world be managed if you, and I, and fifty others, each one with a different mind from all the rest, must have it according to our minds? It would mean that the King of heaven must resign his throne, and give place to universal anarchy. It could not be; it would be impossible that such an arrangement should continue for an hour. We should have to go, in tears, before the Lord, and cry to him, “O Lord, come back, and reign over us, for we cannot get on without thee! Everything is going to destruction for want of an almighty will to manage it.” “Should it be according to thy mind?” No, Lord; never let it be so except when thou hast made my mind to be filled with thy mind, and then it shall be well. “I always have my way,” said a holy man. “How is that?” asked one who heard him, and the good man replied, “Because God’s way is my way.” “I always have my will,” said another, and he gave a similar explanation, “because it is my will that God should have his will.” When God’s will gets to be your will, then it may be according to your mind; but not till then, thank God, not till then.

So now, in the last place, dear friends, I am going to say to you, let us try, by the help of God’s Holy Spirit, to check that spirit which leads men to think that all things should be according to their mind.

First, because it is impracticable. As I have already shown you, it is quite impossible that all things should be according to the mind of men so long as their mind is in its natural carnal state.

Again, it is unreasonable that it should be so. In a well-ordered house, whose will ought to be supreme? Should it not be the father’s? Do you expect everything in your home to be ordered according to the will of your little boy? No, you know that you take a comprehensive view of all who are in the house, and all their concerns, and you are better able to judge than he is what is right. It would be very unreasonable for your child to say, “Everything is to be managed according to my will.” If he were to talk like that, you would soon teach him better, I warrant you; and it is unreasonable to imagine that the Lord should make your will to be the rule of his dispensations. Do not cultivate a spirit which you cannot justify by any sensible and reasonable arguments.

In the next place, it is un-Christlike. “Should it be according to thy mind?” Why, if ever there was a Son of the great Father, according to whose mind things should be, it was our blessed Lord Jesus Christ; yet what did he say? “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.” And as Jesus said, “Not as I will,” is there one among us who shall dare to say, “Let it be as I will”? Will you not join your Elder Brother in that sweet resignation of all desire to be the ruler, in order that the great Father, who filleth all things, may have his way? If you wish to have all things according to your mind, you are not like Christ; for in all things he did the Father’s will, and suffered the Father’s will, too, and rejoiced in it. Let us pray the Holy Spirit to help us to do the same.

Once more, if we desire to have our own mind, it is atheistic; for a god without a controlling mind is no god, and a god, whose will was not carried out, would be no god. If you were to have your way in all things, you would be taking the place of God; do you not tremble at the very thought of it? His throne ill beseems you. Would you-

“Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,

Rejudge his judgments, be the God of God”?

If you are truly converted, you shudder at the bare mention of such a thing as that. Yet, dear sister, was not that the spirit in which you came into this house? Did you not feel, “The Lord has dealt very hardly with me; I can scarcely be reconciled to him”? Oh, drop that rebellious spirit! Thou art but a poor, helpless creature, and he is God over all. Let his supreme will sweetly rule thy heart at this hour; and labour to get rid of that waywardness and that revolting from the Most High. I knew one, who was in mourning many, many years for a child; and a good Quaker said to her, “Friend, hast thou not forgiven God yet?” There are some to whom we might put the same question; and we have heard of some, who professed to be Christians, who, when they met with a very terrible reverse, said they never should understand it,-meaning really that they should never acquiesce in the divine will about that loss. It must not be so with us. Whenever a child falls out with his father, the best thing he can do is to fall in again; for a sullen child, who is angry with his father, will have to come round if he has a wise father. The father will say to him, “My dear boy, there is one of us who must alter before we can be perfectly agreed; and I cannot, for I know I am in the right. It is you who must alter, and come round to my way of thinking.” And if you have fallen out with God by wilfulness and stubbornness, he cannot come round to you, but you will have to come back to him. So yield to him at once; bow down before him,-your own Father in heaven, who loves you infinitely. Do you mean to say that you will keep up the quarrel with him? You began the dispute, and you know that you are in the wrong, and that he is right; so say, “It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good.” Or if you cannot say as much as that, at least do what Aaron did in his great bereavement, “Aaron held his peace,” or what David did when he said, “I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.” Oh, for that blessed silence which springs from acquiescence in the divine will!

I should like you to go further than that, however, and even to praise and bless the Lord for poverty, and pain, and bereavement. In heaven, among the sweetest notes of your song, will be those you sing over your trials here below. There was one who lost his eyesight, but he always praised God for that, for he said that he never saw till he was blind. I have heard of another, who had lost a leg, and he said that he never stood on the Rock of Ages till he had that leg amputated. We, who are branches of the true Vine, will have more of Christ’s sharp pruning-knife than of anything else; but let us praise and bless God for it, and henceforth labour, by the Spirit’s power, to chase out of our soul the idea that things should be according to our mind. Get away to thy room, and confess thy wilfulness and pride, dear brother, if thou hast fallen into that sad state. Ask the Lord to make thy soul even as a weaned child,-

“Pleased with all the Lord provides,

Weaned from all the world besides.”

I know that I have been speaking to some who do not love the Lord. I wonder what it is that keeps them where they now are,-out of Christ. You want something to be altered, you say. “Well, ask the Lord to alter you, for that is the alteration that is needed. The plan of salvation does not quite suit you. Well, there will never be another. Does not Jesus Christ please you? God will never lay another foundation for a sinner to build his hopes upon, so you had better be pleased with God’s way, and build upon Christ Jesus, the sure foundation stone. We tell people, sometimes, that they had better not fall out with their living; and I can tell you, soul, that you had better not fall out with your salvation. God’s way of saving you is the best conceivable way, and it is also the only way. He says that whosoever believeth on the Lord Jesus Christ shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life. May the Eternal Spirit bring you now to believe in the Lord Jesus; and if you do so believe, you shall be saved at once. But do not think that the plan of salvation will be altered to please you. It will not be made according to your mind. There is the gospel; have it or leave it, but alter it you cannot. May the Lord grant that you may accept it, and rejoice in it, for his dear Son’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

GALATIANS 6:6-18

Verses 6, 7. Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things. Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Paul puts that in connection with the support of those who are teachers of the truth; and I have sometimes thought that, in certain churches where God’s ministers have been starved, it was not very wonderful that the people should be starved, too. They thought so little about the pastor that they left him in need, so it was not strange that, as they sowed little, they reaped little. One of these misers said that his religion did not cost him more than a shilling a year, and somebody replied that he thought it was shilling wasted on a bad thing, for his poor religion was not worth even that small amount.

8. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption;

He shall reap what flesh turns to in due time: “he shall of the flesh reap corruption.” What is the end of flesh? The fairest flesh, that ever was moulded into the most beauteous form, ends in corruption; and if we live for the flesh, and sow to it, we shall reap “corruption.”

8. But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

He shall reap what the Spirit really is, and what the Spirit really generates: “life everlasting.” Of course, if a man sows tares, he reaps tares. If he sows wheat, he reaps wheat. If we sow to the flesh, we reap corruption. If we sow to the Spirit, we shall “reap life everlasting.”

9. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

It is a pity to faint just when the time is coming to reap; so, sow on, brother and sister, sow on!

10. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

Extend your love, your charity, to all mankind; but let the centre of that circle be in the home where God has placed you,-in the home of his people: “especially unto them who are of the household of faith.”

11. Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand.

I suppose that he meant, “See what big characters I have made. My eyes are weak, and so, when I do write a letter,” says Paul, “in the dimness of this dungeon, with my poor weak eyes, and my hands fettered, I have to write text-hand, and give it to you in large letters. Well,” he says, “then carry it out in big letters. You see with what large letters I have written to you; now emphasize it all, take it as emphatic, and carry it out with great diligence. As I have written this with mine own hand, and not used an amanuensis, I beseech you to pay the more attention to it,-you Galatians, who seem to be so bewitched that, to deliver you from false doctrine, and an evil spirit, I would even write a letter with my own blood if it were needful.”

12, 13. As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.

“See,” say they, “these Gentiles. We have converted them, and we have got them circumcised. Is not that a wonderful thing?” No, not at all, for he says,-

14. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

“I have ceased to care,” says Paul, “about glorying in men, and making other people glory in my converts. The world is dead to me, and I to it.”

15-17. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.

I have the marks of the whips upon my body. I am the branded slave of Jesus Christ. There is no getting the marks out of me. I cannot run away. I cannot deny that he is my Master and my Owner: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.”

18. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

And that is our benediction to you. The Lord fulfil it to each one of you!